Thursday 28th December 2024 ko 14:00

Gloucestershire County League

TOTTERDOWN UNITED 5 (Tobin 2 24 45 Lowell 21 C Hemming 69)

ALMONDSBURY 4 (Lancastle 43 Hill 45+3 Alrawi 71 Mannings 90p)

Morgan sent off 86 (2nd booking)

Free Entry

Programme online only (non-downloadable)

With Robyn my wife being from Bristol, it’s fair to day I’ve seen plenty of the city and since she’s from Knowle West I’ve seen plenty of Totterdown. If you’ve ever been past Temple Meads station then headed south and climbed up the Wells Road you’ve been to Totterdown.

The catch is that you are also south of the River Avon, which runs close by the station. That of course means you are in Somerset, but the club play in the Gloucestershire pyramid. They always have, being formed in 1964 as Totterdown Athletic, swallowed up Port of Bristol in 1994 to become Totterdown Port of Bristol and had a stint in the County League from 1993 to 2007. They dropped back into the Bristol Leagues, changed name to the current Totterdown United and won their place back in the County League last season.

The club have led something of a nomadic existance, playing in Bedminster, Barton Hill (which is actually north of the Avon), Imperial, and Brislington Cricket Club (adjacent to Brislington FC) before moving to Bristol Barbarians Rugby Club in 2017. That is in Norton Lane in Whitchurch and if, like I did, you’re thinking that you’ve seen that address before, you are no more than half a mile from Hengrove Athletic. You can see their floodlights from the ground. And yes, you are well and truly in Somerset too, clearly it’s which county you are affiliated to that counts rather than simple to geography!

The two codes do seem to co-exist rather well here, even to the extent that for this season the rugby club are using the pitch nearest the extrance formerly used by the football club with the football on the pitch nearest the changing room block. If you visited here last season or before and you count pitches, you are due a revisit!

I was saddened to see Almondsbury FC at this level. They were good hosts on the Hellenic Hop back in 2019 but were relegated in 2023 and finished 10th in the County League last season. This season looks a lot more more positive, they were top of the league having conceded only 8 goals at this point. Which makes what I witnessed all the more bizarre!

To some extent the 9 goal thriller can be attributed to some goal keeping howlers by the visitors, a first half hat trick from Frank Tobin and a glorious lob from the half way line from Ollie Lowell. Certainly things tightened up no end in the second half, but nerves began to jangle when Omar Alrawi made it 5-3. Zac Morgan’s dismissal for two bookings looked to have ended the game as a contest but Jensen Mannings’ late penalty made me wonder what might have happened in there’d been a little more stoppage time?

I suspect that what I saw here was a blip for Almondsbury, there are still top as I write this but for Totterdown it was evidence that they’ve found their feet at this level.